It Happened Just Like That
by Mansah
Summary: Sometimes, to survive, you need to make your own rules.


Another of those half-written stories that is stored on the harddrive because it doesn't ever come out right.

I own nothing whatsoever.

Comments, criticism... it's all received with glee:)

* * *

One day a girl kisses a boy outside a seedy motel room. On paper it doesn't look promising; perhaps it's the fact that they share memories of dead people and more than a year of psychological warfare as well as other equally harrowing things but something definitely jars with any potential dreams of idyll and teenage romance.

'What are we doing?' was exactly the right question to ask and the fact is there's no easy answer. Perhaps they simply didn't have a clue.

So they break up and get back together, they have their hearts broken time and again, mainly due to silences and misunderstandings of elephantine proportions. Volumes could be written detailing spiteful voicemail messages and tear-stained faces (the worst, because, mostly, this is a face both would rather die than show to the world).

Still, somehow, there they still are as the years pass and they recover from the early-day traumas of breakups, jealousy and sex with mortal enemies. Broken hearts are somehow mended and trust is re-established.

They spend years holding on to their separate flats. Somehow, despite the fact that they practically spend every night together it seems too optimistic to take that final step. Keith shakes his head and blames himself.

'You know, they're selling the flat next door?'

'Really? Are you thinking of moving?'

'I was thinking you should.'

'And abandon my den of depravity? Don't get me wrong, it's probably nice and all but it's hardly going to impress the ladies.'

'Would you feel compensated if it would make any future booty calls obsolete? I hear walls can be torn down.'

'You mean it comes with a sexy blonde? No extra fee. Now that's how you should have pitched it.'

'I prefer to delay gratification.'

'Yeah, I've figured that out by now. Aren't you horrified?'

'I've been told a little fear is good for you. But yes, my knees are trembling.'

Fears aside they move in together and contrary to all expectations they manage to create their own kind of domestic bliss. Perhaps it doesn't seem quite as normalised as what Wallace is doing; it's not harmonious and smooth but they wouldn't have it any other way.

Even so, at some point they try to go to therapy. They tell themselves they need it to deal with their issues, that it's the only way they can get through and still be together because these things have broken them up before and they will do so again.

Trouble is she still finds it hard to open up to people, let alone strangers, and he can't quite take authorities seriously. It's not that he's against the idea of feelings journals per say it's just that he has zero respect for those who tend to ask you to keep them. Where were the people in white coats, with their 'talking cures' and sympathetic looks when he needed them anyway?

It's not something they talk about at first; how she keeps missing her appointments until she eventually stops going completely and how, though he lasts for a couple of months longer, he knows he's pretty much paying someone to stare at him with a blank face. Money out the window but it's the thought that counts, hey?

Then one day they sit across from one another at the kitchen table and the conversation kind of veers towards something they're meant to be working on in those sessions and suddenly they're forced to admit the awful truth.

'We're doomed.'

'You know, I'm not quite sure we're in Romeo and Juliet territory yet, perhaps not even Rose and Jack, but surely our love will soon be worthy material for some contemporary scribe. Could resistance to emotional guidance be the new tragic flaw leading straight to star-crossed lover status?'

'Yeah, we really didn't think through the whole epic thing did we? But you know, I think we're beginning to be too old to even qualify, at least I'm pretty sure Juliet was only sixteen and though I still get carded I'd like to think my mind has matured just a little.'

He whistles. 'There goes my second chance of stardom and being the paparazzi darling.'

'Don't lose hope, I'm sure if you put your mind to it you can come up with something else to entice the media; I've heard that everybody loves a brooding hero. Maybe you could get Stephenie Meyer to write your fictionalised biography, think of the inbuilt audience, the inevitable film franchise. You know what though, the fact that I've been able to tolerate you for so long has got to count for something, what the heck did I need to see a therapist for anyway? The madness! The outrage! And to think that I who used to pride myself on being such a rule breaker have become a conformist, what has the world come to? '

'I guess we're both of us to blame for such atrocious human weakness as caving to 'the generally done thing.' How will we ever forgive ourselves?'

'Good thing we realised this now, just imagine where it would have led us: white house, picket fence. Maybe even 2.5 children! The horror! Still, if you think about it the real tragedy is that you thought I didn't know how you'd returned to your bad-boy ways already it's like you don't know me at all.'

'What can I say? I thought you'd given up on the whole bugging me thing.'

'Hey mister, I have ways and means beyond your imagination and some of them don't involve any gadgets at all. I knew when you stopped going before you did. You're not as hard to read as you think.'

'Well you did always like your classics and I guess it's no surprise if my tragic childhood has made me the modern equivalent of a living, breathing Charles Dickens novel. Will it displease you greatly to know that neither are you? It's been a while since I've detected a variant of the 'I'd rather be spelunking' face that used to accompany your ordeal.'

'Well, this confirms it! We're either doomed or made for greatness, I can't tell, but we're something.'

'That we are!'

His grin becomes wolfish as he leans towards her and she has a puzzling urge to pull at his nose. Instead she kisses him, then kissing is interspersed with giggles. They both try to suppress the curious impulse to laugh but every time they catch each other's eye they begin again.

'Oh god, now I'm going to cry too. What's the matter with us?'

Tears are already sliding down the face. But it's a rare moment because the tears are welcome; they are not a sign of weakness or of betrayed emotion but merely a manifestation of a primal feeling. They feel like a release, in fact both tears and laughter do.

For some reason they'd never be able to explain the whole situation just feels ludicrous. Important, heart-breaking but ludicrous. Because, yes, they both have some serious baggage to deal with but somehow joking about it together does more than all the therapy they've had combined. Somehow over dinner they're sharing a hysterical laughing fit and choking on their spaghetti Bolognese.

Laughter and tears lead to intimacy and somehow food gets abandoned to focus on more urgent needs. Sex was never really an issue between them. This evening though it's more playful than normal, but meaningful too. They both wake up feeling more at ease in their minds than they've done in a while. Like they've addressed serious issues through a series of kinky games to which only they know the rules.

'Where've you been hiding those tricks, anyway?'

'Oh, they were always there, baby, you just didn't know where to look, but what do you say we don't let this be a standalone performance?'

It doesn't solve everything but they make a tacit understanding that for them it's okay to keep the therapy sessions between the sheets from now on. Other people might say it's just a way of ignoring facts but well... who cares anyway? Other people aren't them.

They still argue. Not as often as they used to; but every so often there'll be issues. It's not a miracle cure after all. Perhaps it's no cure at all. Sometimes the trigger will be the same problems as it has been since their beginning: her trust issues, his protectiveness. Still as the years go by these issues recede, become less momentous. It's not that their problems go away but as time passes and they remain together despite these things they become less of a threat; the arguments become less heated as they learn to compromise and find a middle ground. They decide that whatever they are doing works for them even if the rest of the world calls them dysfunctional. The fact is that they are happy, eventually they learn to trust in that feeling even when everything else seems to fall to pieces.

x#x#x

She isn't a romantic; whatever she had of such believes withered away sometime between the murder of her best friend, her abandonment by her mother, the rape and a multitude of cases dealing with jealous and adulterous spouses. Sure, that's just a few samples from one particularly dreadful year but there hasn't been much to convince her otherwise since.

He is still a romantic though life should have taught him differently. It seems incongruous with the examples provided by his own parents, their friends, his sister. It's more than an array of lying, cheating and freezing cold marriages. Add in a sprinkle of child abuse, a psychopathic, murderous father, pill addiction and a dead girlfriend and you'll almost get a truthful picture.

If they were somehow different people they would probably sit back and compare scars –literally and figuratively but after more than ten years they have still not grown into detachment. So in general they keep away from openly picking at the scabs; they know from experience there will be days when they're forced to recognise them anyway. Like October the 3rd.

Even in the quiet periods they're never not aware of their past; they might not talk about their bruises but they never hide them either. Not from each other. Other people might call them ugly but if you asked either of them they would say it is one of the most beautiful aspects of the other; most awe-inspiring too. Kissing the burn-marks and tracing the unmistakable line from the leather belts on his torso is more often than not the time she feels the closest to him. She hates them, but she loves them too somehow. Loves who he is because of them, despite of them. It's something they share and it's part of what made them who they are and it's a reminder that they've beaten incredible odds when they reassembled themselves into relatively well-adjusted creatures.

It's the foundation for the mysterious elastic band that first gelded them together. And maybe it's the reason that despite some hit and misses in their relationship no one else quite did it for them.

x#x#x

She comes home one evening after having spent the entire day attempting to think like the latest mutilating serial killer. He's heating lasagne and the smell permeates the entire flat; it seems like the perfect way to dispel all those horrible images from her mind. One time she thought she would never marry but this evening she's tired of only ever dealing with things that perish. Every day she sees bodies that are left forgotten and unclaimed with no recognised tie to the world; she doesn't want that to happen to her.

'Let's get married.'

He doesn't cough up his lasagne. If he's surprised he doesn't show that either. What he does is look up at her, squeezes her hand.

'Let's.'

He smiles. She does too. The future suddenly becomes a possibility before them. It's not that they'd decided to never talk about the future before and yet they never did, not until this moment anyway. Maybe if they'd analysed why they'd see the unacknowledged guilt about being alive and well when loved ones have been left behind, maybe they'd have seen a million things they keep ignoring but which make them tread around so carefully and which determine their entire existence. Things that seemed insurmountable until simple words like 'let's move in together', 'let's get married' are uttered and their worlds have suddenly expanded. It's always the same world and yet it alters, they alter: grow closer.

It's an ordinary, everyday moment until they fill it with a quiet beauty: the future, their future. The truth is these are the moments they prefer, they've had enough drama in their youth to last a lifetime, but a normal, peaceful day, that's something you don't see very often. A future is something they see even less.

She keeps her last name; he's not surprised and he doesn't argue. He used to worry about whether the curse that seemed to follow him stemmed from his genes or his name and while he thinks he has outgrown that fear he doesn't want to take unnecessary risks. He jokes about changing his name instead –but in the end he can't go through with it. He'd scoff at himself if he ever admitted this but the name has become as important a symbol of who he is as the scars on his back. The beauty is that neither of them needs to explain. This is something that both appreciate more than anything, that they can be without explaining or defending and the other just knows. But how would they ever be able to describe this joy of being connected to themselves, let alone an outsider?

So they keep it as it has been since the beginning. They communicate with their bodies, with smiles.

It feels right. What's in a name anyway (except memories and last remaining links with their shared past of murders and rape and murderers and people long gone).

It's kept tightly under wraps; he's still the occasional prey of paparazzi and they're pretty sure the press catching wind of this would give them a field day. There are plenty of old articles from way back when to tell a story that would sell. Neither of them has any desire to appear plastered on the cover of a tabloid magazine. It's not going to be a big thing anyway. While they invite a wider circle of friends to a party in the evening it's only their closest friends and family who are invited down to city hall where they say their I dos.

There are no rings. But he has got her a necklace and if the pendant looks a little like a wedding band who's going to get him in trouble for that? She never said openly that she didn't want one but they've both come to mistrust anything that seems too like it should be. Besides, she's always been more of a necklace person. His eyes moist a little as he hangs it around her neck which is possibly a good thing or he'd see that her eyes are getting a little foggy too. She tells herself it shouldn't mean so much to her and that it's stupid to be so carried away, but then she sees her name written next to his on the paper and though she knows it's nothing but formality she feels ready to burst with happiness.

Wallace is quick to get her to himself at the party afterwards.

'How does it feel to have revealed your marshmallow inside to the rest of the world? Don't think I didn't see you up there; in fact I'm pretty sure your dad captured you on digital. A money-shot if ever there was one.'

'Excuse me, I had best go take care of that business before the picture goes viral.'

He laughs, pulls her out on the dance floor.

x#x#x

They don't go on a honeymoon, not immediately anyway. They lock themselves in their flat for the rest of the weekend; most people know and aren't calling but just in case they've unplugged the phone. They shut the world out and live off whatever is edible in the kitchen; this pretty much translates to ice cream. But after that it's back to work, for the both of them. If they go out for dinner a little more frequently the following month they always have an excuse at hand: 'It's Wednesday after all.'

Eight months later they're off to South America for five months. She's on leave from the Agency and as the CEO of his own company with more money in the bank account than he will ever be able to spend with the life he's been leading lately he feels he has the freedom to take time off when he needs. So they stay weeks in Buenos Aires before they decide to explore other parts of Argentina, then travel up to Brazil to São Paolo, Rio and Salvador via smaller villages. They go stay at a plush resort in the middle of the Amazon forest before they fly out to Peru and from there to Chile. They travel in comfort, live in more stylish hotels than she'd have preferred but they try to get a flavour of local life. Years have taught them that they don't need to agree on everything so long as they're willing to compromise.

They go hiking and he goes surfing and she gets to take amazing photos of landscapes and old ruins and people.

'You know, before I entered the PI biz I used to see myself as a travel or photo journalist.'

She whispers to him one day as if it's some big, embarrassing secret. And it is because it involves an alternate universe only possible before her premature loss of innocence at the age of sixteen.

'Really, I find it easier to picture you as an investigative journalist; I can't imagine you without some deep conspiracy to uncover.'

He kisses her on the nose.

'Kind of glad you didn't opt for either, because as much as I hate the idea of you exposing yourself to danger on a daily basis as a Fed it stills seems better than to not seeing you for months on end while you're out somewhere saving the world camera in hand.'

His tone is light but tender; you wouldn't know these are stories only shared when they feel most at ease. They don't revisit the 'ifs' of their lives most of the time because it requires more of them than they feel ready to face on most days. Besides, these ifs were made impossible at such an early age for both of them that in truth there are precious few of them. Each if is treated with care, as the cherished memories of a brighter future they once had they're like precious jewels that are too fragile to expose to everyday sunlight.

He squeezes her hand.

'This life we're living, it's not so bad.'

She turns her head and smiles at him.

'It really isn't.'

They made their own rules and beat the odds and the future became theirs without their even knowing it.


End file.
